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poems

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves And against the morning’s whiteThe shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night,We’ll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isleWhere bamboos spire to shafted grove And wide-mouthed

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping
slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory

My wife’s new pink slippershave gay pom-poms.There is not a spot or a stainon their satin toes or their sides.All night they lie togetherunder her bed’s edge.Shivering I catch sight of themand smile, in the morning.Later I watch themdescending the stair,

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all The little lesser hills which compass thee, Thou standest, bright with April’s buoyancy,Yet holding Winter in some shaded wallOf stern, steep rock; and startled by the call Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy And cast a

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming;
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that

Talk to you tonight,I wrote this morning, knowingit would only be the afternoonwhere you are, will be,whole neighborhood stillwrapped in a tule fogthat won’t let up—so you reportedbefore supper while I slept.I almost wrote this

Fred Sanford's on at 12
& I'm standing in the express lane (cash only)
about to buy Head & Shoulders
the white people shampoo, no one knows
what I am. My name could be Lamont.
George Clinton wears colors like Toucan Sam,
the Froot Loop pelican. Follow your nose,
he says. But I have

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
I've known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —

I go with the team also.
—Whitman
These are the last days
my television says. Tornadoes, more
rain, overcast, a chance
of sun but I do not
trust weathermen,
never have. In my fridge only
the milk makes sense—
expires. No one, much less
my parents, can tell me why
my middle name

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't

—for my children
I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,
that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it.
It burns there in the past, beyond my reach,
a modest lamp.

Sea’s stony greenblue shatters to white in a running swell under noonsky of cloudlightwhere on a foamed-over cropping of rock a band of oystercatchers faces all one wayinto a nor’wester so shafts of windlight ignite each orange beak in this abidingtribe

The trees alongside the fencebear fruit, the limbs and leaves speechesto you and me. They promise to give the worldback to itself. The apple apologizesfor those whose hearts bear too much zestfor heaven, the pomegranatefor the change that did not comesoon enough. Every seed

Thy brow is girt, thy robe with gems inwove; And palaces of frost-work, on the eye, Flash out, and gleam in every gorgeous dye,The pencil, dipped in glorious things above, Can bring to earth. Oh, thou art passing fair!But cold and cheerless as the heart of death,Without

Here are old things:Fraying edges,Ravelling threads;And here are scraps of new goods,Needles and thread,An expectant thimble,A pair of silver-toothed scissors.Thimble on a finger,New thread through an eye;Needle, do not linger,Hurry as you ply.If you

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows

The old man sitting out fronton the empty patio eatingfried chicken or something or other,bought up the block probably, and notfrom the house of sushiwe were entering,didn’t inspire confidence exactly,but when you returnedfrom the wall of fame to our tablewith

All night our room was outer-walled with rain.Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,And rang like little disks of metal.Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between them.The rain rattled and clashed,And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.

To live through the days sometimes you moan like deer. Sometimes you sigh. The world says stop that. Another sigh. Another stop that. Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets. Perhaps each sigh is drawn into existence to pull in, pull under, who knows; truth be told, you could no more control those sighs than that

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand

Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.O never give the heart outright,For they

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand

What you do with time
is what a grandmother clock
does with it: strike twelve
and take its time doing it.
You’re the clock: time passes,
you remain. And wait.
Waiting is what happens to
a snow-covered garden,
a trunk under moss,
hope for better times
in the nineteenth century,
or words in a poem.
For poetry

No shoes and a glossyred helmet, I rodeon the back of my dad’sHarley at seven years old.Before the divorce.Before the new apartment.Before the new marriage.Before the apple tree.Before the ceramics in the garbage.Before the dog’s chain.Before the koi were

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn'd love,But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one way or another,(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I

Before going to bed I take off my bracelet. It is meant to protect me. A dancer gave it to me: for decades she has known sorrow and beauty. Beloveds have come and gone. Mountains and forest fires. Lives that might have lived through her, but didn’t. Lives that do still live through her. I go to sleep,

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras

Within the circuit of this plodding life,There enter moments of an azure hue,Untarnished fair as is the violetOr anemone, when the spring strews themBy some meandering rivulet, which makeThe best philosophy untrue that aimsBut to console man for his grievances.I have

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn,
or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me....
The Heiligenstadt Testament
Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed

Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being post-modern now, I pretended as if I did not see them, nor understand what I knew to be circling inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled a banana. And cursed

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids

Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the

It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churchesand saloons are filled with decent humans.A mother wants to feed her daughter,fathers to buy their children things that break.People laugh, all over the world, people laugh.We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad;we dislike

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down

Life! Ay, what is it? E’en a moment spun From cycles of eternity. And yet, What wrestling ’mid the fever and the fretOf tangled purposes and hopes undone!What affluence of love! What vict’ries won In agonies of silence, ere trust met A manifold fulfillment, and the

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the

“O Dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”And still the generations of the birdsSing through our sighing, and the flocks and herdsSerenely live while we are keeping strifeWith Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knifeAgainst which we may struggle. Ocean girdsUnslackened the dry land

When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needsNo school of long experience, that the worldIs full of guilt and misery, and hast seenEnough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,To tire thee of it, enter this wild woodAnd view the haunts of Nature. The calm shadeShall bring a

What makes a nation's pillars high
And its foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?
It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.
Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood

I can write about colonialism, Disney, riots & inoculations. Centuries of American history before me: Pocahontas' bust, Rosa Parks arrest records, Elvis Presley meeting Nixon but with only an hour to go before recording a poem at The National Archives, I'm in Starbucks

I look for words in the dark,silently describing to myselfthe particular conditions of the weatheron the morning I saw you most recently—the wind, its patterned disarray—my mind elsewhere, distracted, lyrical,while the pianist plays an encore.Mozart was born on this day

Because when I saw a horsecross a riverseparating two countriesand named it Ghost Rubbleit said No my name is 1935because it also spoke in tonguesas it crossed the black tongueof the waterbecause it still arcs through mewith its zodiacof shrapnel-bright

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-

When I rise up above the earth,And look down on the things that fetter me,I beat my wings upon the air,Or tranquil lie,Surge after surge of potent strengthLike incense comes to meWhen I rise up above the earthAnd look down upon the things that fetter me.

Passers-by,Out of your many facesFlash memories to meNow at the day endAway from the sidewalksWhere your shoe soles traveledAnd your voices rose and blentTo form the city’s afternoon roarHindering an old silence.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you

I’m careful where I step. Water ripplesgreenish blue against hot sand; pebbles mixedwith quartz grains and pine needles, sharpamid the duff, blown down from theupper stories of the sugar pinesclumped along the beach. Kids falling offpaddle boards into the cold lake, voices

To achieve reality (where objects thrive on people's passions), enormous effort
and continuous social interactions are required, and I can't get started
without you. Not here—over there's a better place to begin a funny story.
History with its dead all shot through with regularities in the woods
and following

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate

I
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,Let it not be among the jumbled heapOf murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the

The bakery’s graffiti either spells HOPEor NOPE. But hope and resultsare different, said Fanny Brawne to her Keatsvoiding his unreasonable lung.Getting off the medicinecompletely means light againblinking to light. Device returnedto its factory settings. The complete black

The things that one grows tired of—O, be sureThey are only foolish artificial things!Can a bird ever tire of having wings?And I, so long as life and sense endure,(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inureMy heart to the recurrence of the springs,Of gray dawns, the gracious

The grapefruit in the Florida orchardhas ripened into a globe in Hartfordfor him to look at, not to eat.If he had a tin can he would beatit as a drummer in a band beatshis drum and steadily with a swishand sometimes a gong. It’s his wishto escape from gray walls and sky

Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age, When hours were long and days sufficed to hold Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolledBy shortening moments, when no gaunt presageOf undone duties, modern heritage, Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold Thy presence

How love came in I do not know,Whether by the eye, or ear, or no;Or whether with the soul it came(At first) infused with the same;Whether in part ’tis here or there,Or, like the soul, whole everywhere,This troubles me: but I as wellAs any other this can tell:That when

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When

Amy, I was almost run down by a carafter buying my lunch today.It was the postal police.I was almost hit by the postal police.This is not a joke.There is a police force dedicated to the postal service(the US Postal Service, mind you).They race around in cars,they

My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned. The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place. My brothers are notorious. They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget that we are named. What is that memory?

A woman you do not know wants to join you for lunch. You are visiting her campus. In the café you both order the Caesar salad. This overlap is not the beginning of anything because she immediately points out that she, her father, her grandfather, and you, all attended the same college.

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The

I like to be alone in someone else’s house,practicing my cosmic long distance wink.I send it out toward a mirrorsome distracted bored cosmonaut droppedon an asteroid hurtling vastlycloser to our star. No one watchesme watching thousandsof television hours, knittinga

I sit and meditate—my dog licks her pawson the red-brown sofaso many things somehowit all is reduced to numbers letters figureswithout faces or names only jagged linesacross the miles half-shadowsgoing into shadow-shadow then destruction the infinite light

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,The poets labouring all their daysTo build a perfect beauty in rhymeAre overthrown by a woman’s gazeAnd by the unlabouring brood of the skies:And therefore my heart will bow, when dewIs dropping sleep, until God burn time,Before the

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom

Mira, like a white goddess, is translatingso my left ear is a cave near Kotorwhere the sea lashes and rakesthe iron darkness insidethe black mountains. Young and old, the poetsare letting us know this sweltering night,under a bridge near a river outsideKarver Bookstore at

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance,

The instructor said,
Go home and writea page tonight.And let that page come out of you—Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill

It fills up the space where poems used to be,Until there’s no space left. It’s incessantPhone calls, figuring out money and flights toSomewhere, nowhere, not knowing what comes next:There’s nowhere to go, which is the problem(I think everything’s the problem) taking its toll.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and

They stepped down into cool continual wind that smelled like wet rocks but caressed their faces.The pit was dark. But even when the eyeadjusted there was nothing there to see.All day the white hat stayed above somewhere.There was no better place to spend July.There was no

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m having a feelingso I check my phone or squint at the windowwith a serious look, like someone in a movieor a mother thinking about how time passes.Sometimes I’m not sure how to feel so I thinkabout a lot of things until I get an allergy attack.I take

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,And held it to the mirror of my eye,To see it like a star against the sky,A twitching body quivering in space,A spark of passion shining on my face.And I explored it to determine whyThis awful key to my infinityConspires to rob me

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

—an ars poetica
I remember the death, in Russia,
of postage stamps
like immense museum masterpieces
patchwork
wrapped in linen, tea stained,
with hemp for strapping...
these colored stamps designed for foreign places
were even printed during famine—
so when they vanished, so did

Never arriving in a city missing in locational driftplates shifting under building facades and whipped décor,seas rising and falling at the edge of amusementsand surf. The migrations migrating elsewhere,monarchs lost on their way south, children coming northin droves on their way to

Once, I knew a fine song,—It is true, believe me,—It was all of birds,And I held them in a basket;When I opened the wicket,Heavens! They all flew away.I cried, “Come back, little thoughts!”But they only laughed.They flew onUntil they were as sandThrown

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to the

She and I on a bench eating prawns:
the first day of her fiftieth year and she points
at two street performers about to juggle
fire, and a distant summer morning
surfaces, afloat on the light wind blowing
off the bay—older sisters in the dark, hiding
as big brother parades around the house
his hands

This morning I lookedfor your book onlineand almost bought itfrom the evil giantbut balked. InsteadI wrote a poem in bedabout a faux-leopardjacket while drinkingcoffee from a BetteMidler mug. Marcelsays when he catcheshimself self-censoringhe

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

Because her body is winter inside a cavebecause someone builtfire there and forgot to put it outbecause bedtime is a castleshe’s building inside herselfwith a moatand portcullisand buckets full of mistbecause when you let gothe reinshorsestumble over

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing

Watching Picnic again for theumpteenth time. We needmore trains. The tin-roofed stations inred brick or the grand multi-trackwhite terminals. Someone leftme by train once, tearily, andI never should have let hisjive ass back in to collect his thingsthat were

Time too is afraid of passing, is riddled with holesthrough which time feels itself leaking.Time sweats in the middle of the nightwhen all the other dimensions are sleeping.Time has lost every picture of itself as a child.Now time is old, leathery and slow.Can’t sneak up on

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown,

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and

President Roosevelt, touring Ellis Island
in 1906, watched the people from steerage
line up for their six-second physical.
Might not, he wondered aloud, the ungloved handling
of aliens who were ill infect the healthy?
Yet for years more it was done. I imagine
my grandmother, a girl in that Great Hall’s

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth

Outside on Fremont Ave, blacksnow and no such thing as awhite wig or a lovestruck violetwho sings his heart out. My lungsached, huge with breath and the harshsweetness of strange words. Veilchen,Mädchen

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

By the stream I dream in calm delight, and watch as in a glass,How the clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and white-robed maidens pass,And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles as it spreads,Like a host of armored knights with silver helmets on their heads.And I deem the stream

In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984
A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,
and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump
perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession
and spinning around to throw a strike

O Thou bright jewel in my aim I striveTo comprehend thee. Thine own words declareWisdom is higher than a fool can reach.I cease to wonder, and no more attemptThine height t’explore, or fathom thy profound.But, O my soul, sink not into despair,Virtue is near thee, and

Crisply the bright snow whispered,Crunching beneath our feet;Behind us as we walked along the parkway,Our shadows danced,Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.Across the lake the skatersFlew to and fro,With sharp turns weavingA frail invisible net.In ecstasy the earth

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride

Knows how to forget!
But could It teach it?
Easiest of Arts, they say
When one learn how
Dull Hearts have died
In the Acquisition
Sacrificed for Science
Is common, though, now —
I went to School
But was not wiser
Globe did not teach it
Nor Logarithm Show
"How to forget"!
Say — some — Philosopher!
Ah, to be

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee

I will mix me a drink of stars,—Large stars with polychrome needles,Small stars jetting maroon and crimson,Cool, quiet, green stars.I will tear them out of the sky,And squeeze them over an old silver cup,And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it,So that my drink

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator

so I came to the days of the ResistanceI didn’t know anything but styleit was a style made totally of lightmemorable recognitionof sun. It could never fadenot even for an instanteven as Europe trembledon its deadliest evening

The dog of time pitchfork canter laced with mercury after-craveany semblance to human is speculative, we’ve unburdened themass, the massive body signage, bondage, turf implantunwiring programs and last resort paradigmsindicated by the spikes in goneness unknowableflash how it feels to

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white

If tired of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.There amid lolling juniper reclined,Myself unseen, I see in white defined Far off the homes of men, and farther still The graves of men on an

We were stepping out of a readingin October, the first cold night,and we were following this couple,were they at the reading? and becausewe were lost, I called out to them,“Are you going to the after party?”The woman laughed and said noand the man kept walking, and she

10
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright

Wearing nothing but snakeskinboots, I blazed a footpath, the firstradical road out of that old kingdomtoward a new unknown.When I came to those great flaming gatesof burning gold,I stood alone in terror at the thresholdbetween Paradise and Earth.There I heard a

The mother elk and 2 babies are sniffingthe metal handle of the bear-proof trash bin.I remember the instructions for city people:3 football fields of space between you &the elk if their babies are with them.I’m backing

I am a shell. From me you shall not hearThe splendid tramplings of insistent drums,The orbed gold of the viol’s voice that comes,Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.Yet, if you hold me close against the ear,A dim, far whisper rises clamorously,The thunderous beat and

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door

If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bonesand thirty trillion cells, and each cellhas one hundred trillion atoms, if the spinehas thirty-three vertebrae— if each atomhas a shadow—then the lilacs across the yardare nebulae beginning to star.If the fruit

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.

Saturn seems habitual,The way it rages in the skyWhen we're not looking.On this note, the trees still singTo me, and I long for thisMottled world. PatternsOf the lamplight on this leather,The sun, listening.My brother, my sister,I was born to tell you certain

Whatever hid the sun and moon inside a mountainbrought people there to found the nightwhere a city swans on river waterlaving with light each passing wake,mesmerizing a couple on the riverbrink.They seem unaware what is mythor real, taken up, as it were, by a swan’s billand

The river is a fish
and my tongue
is white paper
you draw
your hand on
and the sounds
keys make
on the waist
of a janitor
in an empty building
on the night of your birth
when the moon was
a live bird pinned
to a girl’s chest
and the color
of a beat-up door
that hides a paint chipped
life where we lick the

To allow silence
To admit it in us
always moving
Just past
senses, the darkness
What swallows us
and we live amongst
What lives amongst us
*
These grim anchors
That brief sanctity
the sea
Cast quite far
when you seek
—in your hats black
and kerchiefs—
to bury me
*
Do not weep
but once, and a long
time

I took the night train there,never dreaming.To cross the straitsmy boxcar crept onto a barge—there was screeching,several tremendous thuds,then with a growlwe sailed.I was already half-awake,anxious for a volcano, neolithic shrines,islands to exploreoff

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

The east is yellow as a daffodil.Three steeples—three stark swarthy arms—are thrustUp from the town. The gnarlèd poplars thrillDown the long street in some keen salty gust—Straight from the sea and all the sailing ships—Turn white, black, white again, with noises sweetAnd swift.

1
The children of the Czar
Played with a bouncing ball
In the May morning, in the Czar's garden,
Tossing it back and forth.
It fell among the flowerbeds
Or fled to the north gate.
A daylight moon hung up
In the Western sky, bald white.
Like Papa's face, said Sister,
Hurling the

I have enough times been the ampersand,the hitch between two vehiclesthe vehicle itself careening questionablyup the mountain road, which is,in my opinion, poorly designed, a hazard.It is sometimes called the coast,the coastal highway, but neverthe cliff-side transfer

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a

Squint a little, and that’s my husband in the photograph, the sailor on the left—the one wearing a rose composed of ink and the Little Bo Peep who standsbefore a tiny setting sun and the blur on his forearm which might be a boat—while the sailor on

They dip their wings in the sunset,They dash against the airAs if to break themselves upon its stillness:In every movement, too swift to count,Is a revelry of indecision,A furtive delight in trees they do not desireAnd in grasses that shall not know their weight.

Poetry does make things happen. A friend says, "I wantedto let you know that my stepfather is chattering like a schoolboy about a poem of yours on my Facebook page.This may not seem like much to you, but this guy has been giving me a hard time since I was

Among many tongues may clangthe bell of ten thousand names.A clepsydra with veins of blood.A caravel on a tide of bloodlettingis also our necessary clock, sothe he who is I at thetime lets out my elephantine toll.Vein of granite, vein of quartz.Piezoelectric hum

The crimson dawn breaks through the clouded east,And waking breezes round the casement pipe;They blow the globes of dew from opening buds,And steal the odors of the sleeping flowers.The swallow calls its young ones from the eaves,To dart above their shadows on the lake,Till its

He disappeared in the dead of winter:The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,And snow disfigured the public statues;The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.What instruments we have agreeThe day of his death was a dark cold day.

The squall sweeps gray-winged across the obliterated hills,And the startled lake seems to run before it;From the wood comes a clamor of leaves,Tugging at the twigs,Pouring from the branches,And suddenly the birds are still.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their

On the train the woman standing makes you understand there are no seats available. And, in fact, there is one. Is the woman getting off at the next stop? No, she would rather stand all the way to Union Station.

The space next to the man is the pause in a conversation you are suddenly rushing to fill. You step

When the sea has devoured the ships,And the spires and the towersHave gone back to the hills.And all the citiesAre one with the plains again.And the beauty of bronze,And the strength of steelAre blown over silent continents,As the desert

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would

34
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Like seeing a hot air balloon.It’s just like seeing a hot air balloon.No helium or flame or 8 passenger basket.No passengers possibly drinking champagne.No pilot or ballast,nor buoyancy, nor balloonist enthusiastentering national contests.No ballast, I cannot stress this

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,

That whisper takes the voiceOf a Spirit, speaking to me,Close, but invisible,And throws me under a spellAt the kindling vision it brings;And for a moment I rejoice,And believe in transcendent thingsThat would make of this muddy earthA spot for the splendid birth

The pigeons ignore us gently as wescream at one another in the parkinglot of an upscale grocer. The cicadasare numbed by their own complaints,so numbed I won’t even try to describethe noise and tenor of their hum, but humthey do like a child humming with hisfingers in his

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more

My son rubs his skin and names it brown,his expression gleeful as I rub a damp clothover his face this morning. Last night,there were reports that panthers were chargingthrough the streets. I watched from my seatin front of the television, a safe vista.I see the savannah.

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No

a text messagefrom her coffin.It said Gladyou’re not here.She's always doingstuff like that. She saysit’s to help mesavor my remainingdays. But I knowit’s because I’mthe only one leftwho hasn’t changedhis number.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!My spirit not awakening, till the beamOf an Eternity should bring the morrow.Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,’Twere better than the cold realityOf waking life, to him whose heart must be,And hath been still, upon the

The earth is motionlessAnd poised in space …A great bird resting in its flightBetween the alleys of the stars.It is the wind’s hour off ….The wind has nestled down among the corn ….The two speak privately together,Awaiting the whirr of wings.

When children can no longer devote sympathy, owing to growing up. One mind always engaged or found with labor in order to be. Later on the trees acquired winter. Sent and took and did not go out. The weight of never shedding. We anticipated a cure if come willingly. We were

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,Like a fair lady at her casement, shinesThe evening star, the star of love and rest!And then anon she doth herself divestOf all her radiant garments, and reclinesBehind the sombre screen of yonder pines

its tricolor streamers floating and trailing.It takes up the air like a determined child.Plath was riding her horses of need,and then breaking them, one by one.The horse of loneliness, the horse of panic.The horse of the Sacre Coeur's calcite-and-rainwater whitepiped on

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have

They carved the letters yellow,and paintedthe wood around the letters green,chained a picnic table to the grassout near where the roof of the deadmall directs a crackof sunset to radiate the Burger King sign gold.Last place open after midnight:then apartment windows

I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,
Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat's

as if opening a crepe sailon a raft of lindendownriver with noglacial cut swerve downsoft like bourbon if I couldask the waters thento chop to shakean apology when you cryI feel a wet bank in mering dry here I’ll wrap youin the piano shawl from the upright

I.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
II.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless

Are you bowed down in heart?Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,From out the palpitating solitudeDo you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?They are above, around,

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.
The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.
There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them

The sky keeps lying to the farmhouse,lining up its heavy cloudsabove the blue table umbrella,then launching them over the river. And the day feels hopelessuntil it notices a few treesdropping delicately their white petalson the grass beside the birdhouseperched on its

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking
for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the

Sometimes I dream of a slave ship docking at port& my grandmother has brought me here. She takes my hand(in the dream I am very young) as we watch the childrendisembark. The children are lithe & descend one afteranother after another—squinting, lifting their hands to shield

Lake, interminable. I do not know where my house is. Where is my house? Summer steams by. Every border is cocked and ready. Flatten body against cool earth. Lie without sound. Be a cool corpse under wire teeth. The police are so young. They do not hear the wailing. Wailing, I’m told, is a figment of your

As a girl I made my calves into little drinking elephants,I would stare at the wonder of their pumping muscles,the sup of their leg-trunks. I resuscitated a bunny oncefrom my cat’s electric teeth. I was on neighborhood watchto save animals, as many as I could. My damage was easy.My

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar

Today when persimmons ripenToday when fox-kits come out of their den into snowToday when the spotted egg releases its wren songToday when the maple sets down its red leavesToday when windows keep their promise to openToday when fire keeps its promise to warmToday when someone you

Do you rememberHoney-melon moonDripping thick sweet lightWhere Canal Street saunters off by herself among quiet trees?And the faint decayed patchouli—Fragrance of New OrleansLike a dead tube roseUpheld in the warm air…Miraculously whole.

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but

The sun isn’t even a pearl today—its light diffused, strained grayby winter haze—this the grayestday so far, so when I enter the WellsFargo parking lot the last thing I expectis to see the sun in the car next to mine.I watch a woman make out with the sun,and I’m jealous of

All yesterday it poured, and all night long I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beatUpon the shingled roof like a weird song, Upon the grass like running children’s feet.And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed, Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,Slid

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of

The yards grow ghosts. Between the limbs and wings,bleached street-lit things, I’m best at moving on.Hunt-heavy, gray, slunk overlow like somuch weight got in the way, my shape’s the shapeof something missed, flash-pop or empty frame.Though you could say I’ve made a game of this,

It is a willow when summer is over,a willow by the riverfrom which no leaf has fallen norbitten by the sunturned orange or crimson.The leaves cling and grow paler,swing and grow palerover the swirling waters of the riveras if loath to let go,they are so cool, so

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as

Old loveliness, set in the country wind,Or down some vain town road the careless tread,Like hush of candles lighted for the dead,That look of yours, half seeing and half blind.Still do you strain at door, but we come not,The little maids, the lads, bone of your bone;In some sad

The child tells me, put a brick in the tank, don’t wear leather, don’t eat brisket,snapper, or farmed salmon—not tells,orders—doesn’t she know the sluice gatesare wide open and a trillion gallonswasted just for the dare of it?

Suddenly, a hole opens in the year and we slip into it, the riptidepull of strange, lonely dogs and broken phone lines.You forgive me if I mistake hunted for haunted,but I do like to rearrange things in my body every few years.Take a can of gasoline to the frayed and

Tomorrow, after we’ve led the processionfollowing Our Lady of the Good Deathback to our chapel, two hundred Sisters,in our white eyelet headwraps and dressesand the company of the Ancestors,will dance a

In a skiff on a sunrisen lake we are watchers.
Swimming aimlessly is luxury just as walking
loudly up a shallow stream is.
As we lean over the deep well, we whisper.
Friends at hearths are drawn to the one warm air;
strangers meet on beaches drawn to the one wet sea.
What wd it be to be water, one body of

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have

And who has seen the moon, who has not seenHer rise from out the chamber of the deep,Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamberOf finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throwConfession of delight upon the wave,Littering the waves with her own superscriptionOf bliss, till

we could send you out thereto join the cackle squad,but hey, that highly accomplished,thinly regarded equestrian—well there was no wayhe was going to join the others’ field trip.Wouldn’t put his head on the table.But here’s the thing:

In my bedroom my weight is three times morethan what I’d weigh on Jupiter.If your kitchen was on Mercury I’d be heavier by halfof you while sitting at your table.On Uranus, a quarter of my weight is meat,or an awareness of myself as flesh.On Venus the light would produce a real

Now thou art risen, and thy day begun.How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face,As up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race!How darkness chases darkness to the west,As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest!For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might,In

It's all I have to bring today—This, and my heart beside—This, and my heart, and all the fields—And all the meadows wide—Be sure you count—should I forgetSome one the sum could tell—This, and my heart, and all the BeesWhich in the Clover dwell.

The last light has gone out of the world, exceptThis moonlight lying on the grass like frostBeyond the brink of the tall elm’s shadow.It is as if everything else had sleptMany an age, unforgotten and lostThe men that were, the things done, long ago,All I have thought; and but the

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackning

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed

Some bad whiskeyI drink by myselfjust like youwhen this windblows as it doesin the deltawhere a lost hearing aidcan be takenfor a grub wormwhen the black constellationsmake you swim backwardsin circles of bloodstableboys ruin their hands

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

III
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a

What people don’t know about my nameis that my grandmother gave me that “k” —my very own unexpectedconsonant— those two strong arms and two strong legs,that broom-handle spine— that letter about no one with a name

You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain
that merges to gold again,
as white as the white rain
that beats through
the half-opened flowers
of the great flower tufts
thick on the black limbs
of an Illyrian apple bough.
Can honey distill such fragrance
As your bright hairó
For your face is as fair as rain

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.
When they came wi' a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
"First let these go!" quo

All the world is one, like an angry deity’s essence dropped in the oceanbecoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens ParisWhat happens Vicenza U.S. Base or Prodi, Kyoto Accord, XL Pipelineadvanced warplanes to Japan—what happens? Egypt, Yemen, SyriaNASA’s

Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never.”They’re unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.Never? Never ever again to see you?An error, I aver. You’re never nothing,because nothing’s not a thing.I know death is

Beneath canopies of green, unionists marched doggedlyoutside The Embassy. Their din was no matchfor light lancing through leaves of madrone treeslining the Paseo then flashing off glossy black Maybachsskidding round a plaza like a monarch

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The

Night fell one year ago, like this.He had been writing steadily.Among these dusky walls of books,How bright he looked, intense as flame!Suddenly he paused,The firelight in his hair,And said, “The time has come to go.”I took his hand;We watched the logs burn out;